Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Between 1986 and 1989, U.S. Treasury Secretary-Designate Timothy Geithner was employed at Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger’s Kissinger Associates influence-peddling firm, which also employed George W. Bush’s former special envoy to Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, during the early 1990s. Commerce Secretary-Designate Bill Richardson, also is a former employee of Kissinger Associates.

Geithner’s former associate at Kissinger Associates, Henry Kissinger, was not too pleased when some New York Times reporters in the late 1980s decided to write an investigative article about Kissinger Associates’ clients and their past links to former Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, who was the Kissinger Associates president before he moved into his State Department office in 1989. On April 14, 1989, for example, the Wall Street Journal reported that Henry Kissinger was “annoyed” at the Times for its “investigation of Kissinger Associates’ clients” and was “threatening a lawsuit against the paper for harassing clients.”

The results of this New York Times investigation of Kissinger Associates were published on April 30, 1989, in an article titled “Kissinger And Friends And Revolving Doors” by Jeff Gerth and Sarah Bartlett. The article noted that, initially, another former Kissinger Associates colleague of Geithner, former National Security Affairs Adviser Brent Scowcroft, “told the White House he was merely a consultant to Kissinger Inc.” and only “later amended his financial disclosure statement to reflect his position as vice-chairman.”

According to the 1989 New York Times article, Scowcroft also “told the White House he had to disclose only the name of Kissinger Associates, not the specific clients he worked with, because he was merely a consultant to the firm.” Scowcroft only amended the financial disclosure statement he had filed on February 21, 1989 (to indicate that he was actually the former Kissinger Associates vice-chairman) on March 17, 1989, “one day after a reporter asked him why he had not reported” his true Kissinger Associates post on his original financial disclosure form.

On his public disclosure form, according to the 1989 New York Times article, Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner’s former colleague, Scowcroft, indicated that he would “disqualify himself from specific matters involving companies he” held “stock in and former clients such as Kissinger Associates, but not from matters involving the firm’s clients.” The New York Times also reported in 1989 that “among those willing to pay $200,000 or more to be clients of Kissinger Associates are ITT, American Express, Anheuser-Busch, Coca Cola, H.J. Heinz, Fiat, Volvo, LM Ericsson, Daewoo and Midland Bank.”

The “Kissinger And Friends And Revolving Doors” article also reported in April 1989 that Treasury Secretary-Designate Geithner’ former colleague, Scowcroft, “belatedly disclosed that he held stock in Kissinger Associates and, according to Mr. Kissinger and public documents, he arranged last month to have Mr. Kissinger buy it back for nine times its estimated worth”; and that Scowcroft’s Kissinger Associates salary had exceeded $293,000 per year during the time that Geithner was employed by Kissinger Associates. (end of part 3)